This application to establish a Vision Infrastructure Center is founded on the emerging strength and growing promise of vision research at the University at Buffalo. We are ideally suited for this program because we are currently a small but tightly knit faculty of 5 NEI-funded investigators with multiple overlapping scientific areas of interest. In addition, we have the commitment of the Department of Ophthalmology and the School of Medicine for continued, rapid growth of our research mission. Our proposal is to create advanced research facilities that will serve to enhance the research and collaboration of current faculty plus serve as a magnet for new vision scientists. The objective is to establish state-of-the-art modules in Biophotonics and in Vision Transgenics. Both modules will extend technologies currently in use, enabling researchers to broaden current scientific boundaries. These modules take advantage of the coupled expertise of the present vision faculty, harnessing a synergy that will foster collaborative research. It also utilizes expertise of other faculty and institutions at the University. The goal is to have the University at Buffalo adopt vision research as one of their select targets of support for designation as an area of excellence, which would entail a major infusion of infrastructure support and recruitment of new vision faculty.